From research to launch, design an art education platform in China
When my business partner and I founded Magic Brush, we merely had a blurry vision of what the product would look like. We believed that we had a great idea, but we had no clue if it would work, or how we should proceed. After months of research and trials, we started to build something entirely new from scratch: a never before seen educational platform that was unique on the market.
Overview
Magic Brush was an online education platform that delivered western art educational resources to students in China, and taught them English at the same time through art teachers directly recruited from the USA.
The platform was aimed to achieve three objectives:
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Teach students in China about artistic ability and what is considered art/beauty;
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Teach non-English speaking children the proper way of communicating ideas and thoughts in English;
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Train children on creative and independent thinking.
Role
Period
Co-founder
Product Designer
2019 - 2021
Chapter 1: Empathy
Back in 2019, my business partner and I observed one phenomenon in the visual creative industry in China: a lot of the visual creative content creators such as UI designer or concept illustrators had trouble articulating and communicating their feelings and thoughts; at the same time, they were great in “making” what they were told to make, but not really good at “creating” art.
Research - Market
We believed that the fundamental problem was rooted in education, especially education for the youth. It appeared that everyone was aware of this infamous fact in China, but a few knew how to solve it. To get a clearer understanding of this problem, we consequently contacted, and interviewed over 10 well-established online and offline visual art education institutions, companies, and schools, trying to understand what this market looks like. Many of these companies formed business partnerships with us after our product was launched.
We found out that:
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The market lacked high-quality art education resources
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China has implemented a so-called “exam-oriented” education mode for decades due to its large population. Students are forced to focus on techniques only (more specifically: sketch) so that they can pass their art college exam. Hence, in the current market, no art education organization pays attention to other subjects such as “aesthetic value”, “how to think creatively” or “how to articulate feelings”.
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Parents paid excessively for their children’s education
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Students in China were forced to compete with each other to fight for those good college openings. The more competitors, the more they would have to study. Therefore, out-of-class tutoring became more and more expensive, and parents would pay high amounts of money for their kids to be trained in addition to their normal school hours.
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However, classes for pure art and aesthetic training were not welcomed on the market
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For the same reasons mentioned above, those classes that do not help children gain good test score, were neither introduced nor taught.
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Research - Users
After the market exploration process, we wanted to find out what might drive parents and children to choose one visual art education platform over another.
We wanted to talk to those parents whose children were 6 to 15 years old and showed interest in learning how to draw or paint.
We set the age limit from 6 to 15 because children below 6 can hardly understand abstract art concepts, and typical high school students in China will completely devote all their time to study science or literature. Students who target art majors will also devote their entire availability to practicing sketching techniques. Meanwhile, higher-level education will require more qualified teachers, thus increasing costs in general.
Quantitative
Questionnaires were designed and assigned to 12 families. We promised to give participants free lectures once the platform was built as a reward.
Qualitative
Interviews and concept tests were scheduled with 8 families. Each appointment took 40 - 80 minutes for us to interview. Our major focus was to find out what potential users really wanted, what were their frustrations, and whether our product concept was accepted by the market.
Synthesis
One of the interesting things we discovered was that participants may have survey bias, and lied about the learning objectives on the answer they submitted: on the questionnaire, almost 92% of the participants revealed that the most important reason they might choose this course was for kids to increase their artistic abilities.
However, through thorough and deep discussions with parents, more than half admitted that their main objective was to help kids to practice oral English, which was greatly related to students’ school grades.
One of the 1 v 1 classes we had for high level students;
the screenshot shows the English and Art objective for this class
Yet, “increasing artistic abilities” sounded much more sublime and attractive to our potential users.
We believed, that through years of "exam-oriented" education, English has became one of the most import subjects among all.
When users heard about teachers from America, their first reaction was: "it can help my children practice their English!"
Although our users wanted to be different from those “exam-oriented” parents, they couldn’t help but to worry about the grades at school due to the peer pressure caused by the social environment.
Therefore, we decided to help users fulfill both of their needs: Art and English.
Chapter 2: Define
Summary of major user pain points:
Pain point 1:
Parents recognized and approved the Western-style art education for their children, especially on the visual artistic ability training, but had no access to those educational resources.
Pain point 2:
Parents wanted their children to learn from high-quality out-of-class tutoring organizations, but had no method of judging which one was good.
Pain point 3:
Parents wanted their children to have better understanding of English language, but what they were learning in school was not practical at all.
Chapter 3: The Platform
Magic Brush's platform contained the following key components:
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Teachers
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Curriculum
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User Support
The Teachers
Based on user research, the teachers’ educational background was users' (parents) top consideration when measuring the platform qualification.
Therefore, our teacher candidates must possess reputable college degrees and certifications.
Every newly recruited teacher was required to go through multiple training processes.
The trainings included:
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Culture shock prep & teaching tips towards students in China
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English teaching requirements
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Art teaching requirements
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Equipment & software adjustment
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Customer relationship and liabilities
The Curriculum
The curriculum was designed based on the
<Visual and Performing Arts Content Standards for California Public Schools>, so that our students can directly align with the most advanced American art education system.
We divided the curriculum into three levels; each contained 30 lessons.
The difficulty of both English and Art would increase as students progressed. We used the spiral curriculum design in which key concepts are presented repeatedly throughout the curriculum, but with deepening layers of complexity.
The art topics were carefully selected to fulfill users’ demands.
Each lesson was divided into 5 concepts:
Thinking, Concept, Technique, Analysis, and Practice
User Support
(Customer Relationship)
Each student got a free demo lesson to try before admission. We used these opportunities to evaluate students’ levels of English and Art, then grouped those (no more than 4) at similar levels together to form a class.
Parents were encouraged to refer our platform to their friends. Every successful referral would get parents a free lesson as an incentive reward. We set no ceiling for such referral. If a mom could get 30 referrals, she could get the entire semester free of charge.
We also asked teachers to evaluate and track students’ progress based on different attributes.
For every lesson, the teacher needed to leave detailed comments for each student.
We also helped students digitize their artworks to form their portfolios. It not only provided a “show-off” opportunity for parents to post children's artwork on their SSN, but also helped us promote our program.
Chapter 4: The Impact
We aggressively collected user feedback and utilized this to upgrade the curriculum 5 times for the entire 90 lessons within 2020..
We also improved our teaching environment based on user feedback. Teachers were required to use dual-cameras in class to maximize teaching efficiency. We also switched to a different online video conference platform to enhance the user experiences.
As a result of all our efforts, our paid customers increased 1600% from 2020 to 2021. Monthly revenue grew fast, revenue in the first quarter of 2021 increased 4000% compared to the same period in 2020.
Our re-subscription rate increased to over 70% by 2021, which was more than double compared to the industrial average of 30~35% in China back in 2019-2021.
Through the entire 2 years of operations, only 2 customers requested a refund customers asking for refund in the middle of the semester. All due to schedule conflicts.
Parents would voluntarily repost our advertisements, and ask neighbors to try our classes. Some of the customers who worked in the education or advertisement industries, even became our business partners afterwards.
“At first my student Cynthia was really shy and didn’t want to talk or show her art. Now she’s leading conversations (as best she can with her limited English) and puts 200% into every artwork. She covers the whole paper with lots of fine detail and really takes her time to do it right. I’m very proud of her”
- Teacher Alexis
Collaboration
As the designer of the platform, I had to maintain a close collaboration with all other functional managers such as HR, sales, and marketing.
I also drafted multiple guidances for each functional team to refer to when they launch new projects such as marketing campaigns.
Chapter 5: The End
In March, Magic Brush was actively developing new products for different STEAM subjects using our proven methods. The MVP for Music, Coding, and Science had all tested successful and began the process of enrollment.
We also started approaching investors for potential Angel round investment.
From April to August 2021, without any signs, China banned all of the for-profit tutors from giving online classes and nationalized the entire out-of-school education industry. After-school tutors were not allowed to raise capital or float shares. Companies that taught school subjects could no longer accept overseas investment. The regulations also banned foreign companies, or classes involving foreign teachers to conduct any education related business in China.
The unveiling of the new regulations was so abrupt, that 6 billions of dollars vanished from the stock market within a month. Over 90% of firms in the industry were put out of business in two weeks. The total industry loss was close to 100 billions USD.
The new regulations quickly cut our entire advertizement channels and cashflows. We used the rest of the money we had to finish the remaining lessons with our students.
It was a heavy strike to Magic Brush but also a valuable lesson to us.
Me and my business partner devoted our entire three years to this startup, and we learned so much from many perspectives. Magic Brush is now a memory that we will treasure for life.